CDI Rings in the Fiscal New Year as the Rural Cooperative Development Center for the Northeast

The New Year comes early when you're on the Federal calendar. Back in September, the US Department of Agriculture Rural Business-Cooperative Service announced Cooperative Development Institute (CDI) as one of 28 awardees for its fiscal year 2010 Rural Cooperative Development Grants. The USDA is unique among Federal agencies in recognizing that cooperatives are a strategic component of sustainable economic development. “The cooperative business model continues to be successful in creating wealth in rural communities,” said Agriculture Deputy Secretary Kathleen Merrigan.

The $200,000 one-year grant allows CDI to assist in the pre-development phase of forming cooperative businesses in rural places. “People come to us for help navigating through the process of forming a common vision and making decisions as a group,” says cooperative development specialist Jennifer Caruso. “That’s what sets CDI apart from our business development colleagues who work with sole proprietors or partnerships with one or two decision-makers." CDI staff lead market, product and other business planning research and help groups with organizational development, legal structure and setting up their books.

CDI also uses the RCDG funds to provide basic technical assistance and consultation to groups facing a cooperative business opportunity or challenge, training and instruction to cooperative and community leaders, and knowledge development through research, collection and networking. Examples of RCDG-supported CDI projects include:

• Community Supported Fisheries, modeled after Community Supported Agriculture, in which local seafood consumers ally with fishermen to preserve access to fresh seafood and fishermen’s livelihood
• Southern New England Resident Owned Communities program, helping residents of manufactured home parks to preserve and improve their homes by buying the land and managing their communities as a cooperative
• Improvement of governance systems and financial management among the Northeast region’s consumer food cooperatives
• Data Commons Cooperative, creating a shared, public database of cooperative and solidarity-based economic initiatives in North America

For most projects, the RCDG funding acts as a springboard for leveraging other funds. CDI raises an additional $2 in funds from other sources for every dollar provided by the RCDG. CDI’s project partners have committed $84,850 in donated time and money to directly amplify the grant’s impact.

We wish to thank the Rural Business-Cooperative Service of USDA Rural Development, the Southern New England office Director of Community Programs Dan Beaudette, Director of Business Programs Dick Burke, the Massachusetts delegation of representatives, in particular Congressman John Olver, and our state Senator Stan Rosenberg for their continual support over the years.

This year’s award is the 11^th RCDG grant that CDI has received in its 15-year history. Along with its partners in Cooperation Works! and the National Cooperative Business Association, CDI helped to write and pass the original legislation establishing RCDG appropriations in the mid-1990s. We are now joining CW! and NCBA in advocating for a greater maximum grant award, multi-year grants, and grants from other parts of the Federal government to better address the needs of urban co-op development.

Please contact us regarding cooperative development projects in your area. We will help to make them happen!

Did you know? CDI is participating this year in the United Cooperative Appeal as one of 18 recipient organizations. Donations are tax-deductible, so you can bypass the Feds and make sure your money goes straight to great co-op developers.

CDI is an Equal Opportunity agency. As a recipient of federal funds this organization must adhere to civil rights laws, which prohibit discrimination on the basis of race, color, religion, sex, national origin, age, familial status, or a disability, and thereby we give assurance of compliance with relevant laws and regulations. If you have any comments to make about our observance of these laws, please contact us. To file a complaint of discrimination, write USDA, Director, Office of Civil Rights, 1400 Independence Avenue S.W., Washington, D.C. 20250-9410, or call (800) 795-3272 (voice), or (202) 720-6382 (voice and TDD).

Who’s New? Fresh Faces, Fond Farewells, and Familiar Folk at CDI

The Cooperative Development Institute, the Northeast Center for Cooperative Business, counts a large roster of cooperative development specialists, researchers, and activists among its partners and associates. Developing a cooperative economy in the Northeast can only be done with the participation of hundreds if not thousands of individuals and groups.

But who is CDI? The people behind the name have shifted during the past year.

We took on Andy Danforth to run our new SNEROC program, helping manufactured home park residents become cooperative owners of their communities. He is now also the organization’s Financial Manager.

Our new Executive Director, Noémi Giszpenc, came from the CDI Board into a management position. She brings a wealth of experience in the worker-ownership world and knowledge about cooperative systems in Europe.

In other Board news, we welcomed Dan Bell, long-time Ohio Employee Ownership Center staffperson and supporter of the Eastern Conference for Workplace Democracy, and Brian Van Slyke, a fourth-year student at Hampshire College and creator of Co-opoly, the game of worker cooperatives. We’re still recruiting new Board members ahead of our annual meeting in November, so pass your nominations on to us.

We said goodbye to our 10-year veteran Financial Manager Julie Paquette, and wish her luck in her master’s program in psychology at Springfield College. Our fearless leader of 5 years, Jen Gutshall Caruso, is on sabbatical, or what you might call a “staycation”--a long-overdue break peppered with constant calls for guidance and threaded with those co-op development projects dearest to her heart.

Our Board members Terry Daniels and Suzette Snow-Cobb have moved on to exciting work. Terry is developing a hybrid community hour exchange/worker-owned weatherization co-op in Maine, and Suzette is pursuing a Master’s of Management of Cooperatives and Credit Unions at St. Mary’s. We look forward to following their innovative efforts.

Meantime we are happy to count among our loyal staff co-op development specialist Lynda Brushett, who continues to bring professional, innovative energy to agriculture and food cooperative development. And we’d be nowhere without Kathleen Fekete, who keeps our office and procedures running smoothly and reliably.

Thanks also to our continuing Board members, Tom Cosgrove, a farmer’s banker, Len Krimerman, the people’s philosopher, Roger Willcox, housing co-op Hall of Fame inductee, and Randy Zucco, worker-owner-founder-rep extraordinaire. Thanks as well to everyone in our network of partners and associates. This is a great team with a great mission of building a cooperative economy. Let’s get to work!

CDI turns 15, revs engine

August 26, 2009
SOUTH DEERFIELD, MASSACHUSETTS  - Fifteen years ago this week, a group of cooperative leaders from New England and New York introduced the region to the Cooperative Development Institute (CDI). Its mission: to grow the Northeast’s cooperative economy.

“In fifteen years,” says Executive Director Jennifer Gutshall, “this organization has helped more than 30 cooperatives in the Northeast to start up and incorporate, and has assisted hundreds more to garner funding, write business plans and financial projections, develop better policies and procedures, purchase property and relocate, expand, transfer ownership, create succession and retirement plans, implement new strategies, train boards and staff, and more.

Formed in 2002 with support from CDI, PV Squared is a worker-owned cooperative based in western Massachusetts and central Connecticut that provides assistance with renewable energy systems.

“All those cooperative businesses are providing value to their members, anchoring their local communities, and supporting an economy that works with and for people. We’ve been developing the cooperative economy all along – but now we will do it with even more purpose and strategy.”

CDI is the Northeast center for cooperative development, providing business services, technical assistance, education, training, and networking to the region’s thousands of cooperatives and credit unions.

“Cross-sector work defines CDI,” says Gutshall. “We’ve researched how cooperatives can market themselves jointly, convened regional conferences on energy, sustainable forestry, and community development, and communicate regularly across sectors. Now, we are promoting ever-greater information-sharing and peer support at the local and regional level, and helping cooperatives seed and sustain each other.”

Since March 2007, Cooperative Maine has been working with CDI and other partners to build a statewide network of cooperatives and all those interested in using and promoting the co-op model of business rooted in community.

Board member Noémi Giszpenc notes, “CDI’s fifteenth birthday celebration is a great occasion to reflect on how far we’ve come and gear up for the next phase. I’m reminded of the ‘Quinceaños’ ceremony that marks a young woman’s coming of age in some Hispanic societies.”

Recently, CDI board, staff and associates took a long look at the organization’s mission in light of how the world has changed in 15 years. They recognized that thanks in part to Cooperation Works!, a network of U.S. cooperative development centers that CDI helped establish, as well as to innumerable national and regional partnering associations, interest in the cooperative model has grown tremendously.

“With the current worldwide economic situation,” Giszpenc says, “and the advance of some key technologies, we are seeing unprecedented opportunities. CDI will continue to develop strategic local relationships that will make cooperative development information and assistance easier and cheaper to access. The people of the Northeast never needed to know about cooperatives more than they do now.

“Throughout this fifteenth year, CDI will be rolling out an even more information-rich website and letting our regional network know what we are doing and how people can take advantage of it,” the board member adds.

CDI’s Lynda Brushett sums it up: “While each group of people who form a cooperative to meet their needs is unique, we take the mystery out of cooperative development.”

CDI will focus outreach and education in program areas recognized as crucial to community well-being, such as healthy local food, clean energy, healthcare, quality jobs, and affordable housing. Each of these sectors is currently marked by innovation and expansion, fueled by people’s real needs and desires, and the cooperative model can channel that energy into productive and stable businesses.

“In the area of affordable housing, our fifteenth year will see a dramatic expansion of our services to residents of manufactured home parks who are looking to organize, buy their parks, and run them as resident-owned cooperatives,” Brushett states.

Lilac Drive Co-op in Raymond, NH, the site of the ROC USA launch event in May of 2008. Photo credit: Geoff Forester.

CDI has been named one of eleven Certified Technical Assistance Providers (CTAPs) to join the national affordable housing partnership, ROC USA™ Network. It was also awarded a $50,000 implementation grant from The Corporation for Enterprise Development’s I’M HOME program to support the work.

Andy Danforth, a longtime Trustee and Board President of the Cooperative Fund of New England, will manage the Resident Owned Community program for the Cooperative Development Institute. He notes, “We are excited by the opportunity to offer technical assistance and financing options for residents of manufactured home parks in Massachusetts, Connecticut and Rhode Island. Our assistance will allow them to buy their communities and secure their economic futures through resident ownership.”

Map of Manufactured Housing Parks by county in 3-state SNEROC area

In the three-state area, there are 494 manufactured home communities. With an estimated 94,000 residents the potential impact is considerable.

“The program will gain from CDI’s cross-sector experience and connections,” adds Gutshall. “We can help the new resident-owned communities set up purchasing co-ops for goods and energy, access credit unions, and network with other local cooperative businesses.

“They will benefit from our ever-expanding network of co-op managers and directors, co-op development professionals, academics, and local, state and regional community partners. We could not possibly accomplish CDI’s mission without these co-op leaders.”

 

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CDI wants to hear from you. Do you want to learn more, access our services, become a CDI local partner? Send an email with comments, questions, suggestions and more to info@cdi.coop, visit www.cdi.coop or call 1-877- NE COOPS or (413) 665-1271, fax (413) 665-1275, or write to CDI, P.O. Box 244, South Deerfield, MA 01373. We welcome your two cents, as well as larger donations via Paypal.